“Yes.” He steps closer, eyes desperate now. “Evie, I love you.”
The words hit me so hard I go silent.
There they are.
The words I begged the universe for last night, arriving now in the rain with bloodshed behind them and criminals watching from across the street.
It hurts.
God, it hurts.
I shake my head, tears burning my eyes. “No.”
His face goes still. “No?”
“You don’t get to say it now because you’re scared I’ll walk away.”
“I am scared you will walk away.”
“That doesn’t make it better!”
“I am saying it because it is true.”
“I needed it last night.”
“I know.”
“I needed it before I spent all day thinking you were dead.”
“I know.”
“I needed it before you became whatever this is.”
He looks shattered by that. “I am still me.”
“I don’t know that.”
His eyes close for one second.
When he opens them, they are dark with grief. “What do you want me to do?”
Come home, my heart screams.
Choose me.
Choose the bakery.
Choose the apartment and the ridiculous magnets and the life we almost had before the world caught fire again.
But the words cannot get past the fear.
Because if he chooses me now and leaves again tomorrow for another ugly room, another dead crime lord, another war he thinks only he can stop, I will not survive having hope reopened and cut out twice.
“I want you to stop making me love a ghost,” I whisper.
Kauss goes pale beneath dark scales.
Arturo approaches from behind him, stopping several paces away. “Kauss. We have movement on Ron’s west route.”
